For a long time, manufacturing has been digitally disconnected. With GVA of 358 billion USD in 2017 and with the aggressive target of achieving 1 trillion USD by 2025, Indian manufacturing industry today is largely fragmented and inefficient. These pain points became more prominent for low volume production and prototyping.

COCO is India’s first online manufacturing platform offering on-demand manufacturing, using 3D Printing and machining, for enterprises and individuals. It is a revolutionary tool for people involved in engineering design who need access to manufacture prototypes and low volume production for form / function / fitment tests, or to launch a small batch in the market.

The cloud software is designed and developed by Chizel - a Pune based enterprise working in the field of 3D Printing since the past 3 years. With ever increasing customer demands, the team decided to adopt technology at its core to ensure 24x7 uptime providing seamless information and access to reliable manufacturing across India.

CNC Times had a discussion with the Company’s Director Mr. Ravi Ranjan, last week. Here are the excerpts.

Manufacturing: Anytime, Anywhere! Sounds amazing. How did you realise the market?

We have been offering manufacturing services since the past 3 years now. We realised that although there are numerous service bureaus in India, customers still struggle to access manufacturing seamlessly. Unlike mass manufacturing, low volume production is a highly expedited process. Customers need quality parts in the shortest span of time. To manufacture the parts, customers often connect with multiple vendors to check their availability and to obtain quotes and timelines which takes anywhere between 8-24 hours on an average. All the confidential files are sent through email which is not the most secure medium and the agreements are bound by a simple NDA. The to and fro communication concerning design modifications happens over e-mail which is the least efficient mode of communication in the digital age. Also, there is no centralised source of data of the previous work and learnings. The current manufacturing scenario is analogous to hotel, telecom, food, and logistics industry before advent of DIGITAL INDIA.

Our cloud platform is a first step towards our goal of making manufacturing easy, accessible and secured. With our platform, our users can come online anytime; upload their 3D CAD files; and get access to a broad range of manufacturing processes like 3D printing, CNC almost instantly! We are bringing wide material options on a single platform to provide one-stop solution for our users. The software currently provides upfront costing and timeline commitments. Until the user places the order, the files are on cloud – secured and inaccessible to anyone.

Once the user decides to manufacture the part, he can directly place the order to us online. Chizel manages a fleet of industrial machines, including 3D printers and CNCs, across India, directly and through its manufacturing partners. Our smart algorithm determines the right manufacturing process and its availability in the closest location to our customer, ensuring low cost and fastest delivery. We work closely with our manufacturing partners which helps us provide reliable quality output for every part that is manufactured.

Who are your existing customers?

In the last 3 years, we have acquired 200+ customers across India and manufactured 10000+ parts for them. Our customers vary from Startups to industry leaders from Medical, Automotive, FMCG, and Electronics sector. We have received welcoming response from our clients as they are loving the convenience of one-stop manufacturing where they get instant access to processes; materials; quotes; timelines etc. for which traditionally they used to spend a large amount of time and then hustle to get quality parts. The platform helps them is taking right decisions almost instantly round the clock.

Within 6 weeks of our launch, we have seen 250+ enquiries on our platform making 400+ quotes.

How do you see the Future of manufacturing evolve?

I am just connecting the dots. Unlike software development, where changes are easy and fast, hardware development poses a stern challenge to make design modifications because of the limitations offered by moulding processes. We believe our customers should have the ability to manufacture low volume productions that provide low risk, less inventory and flexibility to change the design and be more responsive towards market demands.

In future we will see that manufacturing will be highly data driven. Today, there is no central repository of manufacturing learnings/data. It’s mostly experience based. As most of the advance manufacturing is getting automated, we will see less manual intervention and more data driven decision making. We will see local manufacturing shops becoming more agile and flexible for low production volumes. All these shops will be digitally connected with a single cloud platform with which users can access global manufacturing data within seconds.

Chizel has just taken first stride towards a grand vision. With our platform, today, anyone across India can manufacture a product without knowing the nitty-gritties of manufacturing processes. The power of making things is extended to individuals and organizations, and all one has to do is, login to www.chizel.io and experience the power of manufacturing at their desktop.